Systems and methods for performing energy efficient communication. A transceiver for use in a point-to-point packet-based communication link with packet erasures is described. The transceiver can include a data source to provide bits of data for transmission to a remote device. The transceiver can map the bits of data to symbols in a constellation according to a modulation scheme and can provide the symbols on one or more subcarriers. The transceiver can include co-located orthogonally polarized antenna elements or spatially separated antenna elements or both. The symbols can be transmitted in packets via one or more of the antenna elements. The transceiver can determine a metric of average transmit energy per bit successfully decoded, and not erased, at the remote device and can adjust transmission powers at the antenna elements to reduce the average transmit energy per successfully decoded and unerased bit.